Sup Veeky Forums I finally finished this astonishing novel, seems like one big astonishing straw-man fallacy to me...

>pursue self interest
>respect your boss's private property rights
pick one

This is the mentality that's fucking up the world at the moment. People believe that if you've pissed someone off you've done something right. By this logic if I were to shit on your face while stabbing your loved ones to death I would presumably have "got sump'n rite" or you wouldn't be so triggered

I know this is probably bait but lots of people actually think this way.

do you think the reverse is true? By your logic only if you don't offend someone you did something right?
>inb4 i haven't said that, i haven't said that at all!
You want to make a profit, well it upsets me, so making profit is wrong.

No not at all. I just think that people have begun to justify their shitty opinions based on the fact that they've annoyed someone. Seeing it as having "touched a nerve" or something like that.

Of course some facts will annoy people but I don't think pointing out someone is mad about what you said is a decent argument and it's used more and more often these days.

Because idealism is a state of states which will never be achieved. It should be universally accepted and acknowledged at this point that humans are inherently flawed and corrupt in/by nature. That said, it should come as no surprise that corruption and big government go hand-in-hand.

the libertarian dream: let's live in a world with no government so at least those fucking us in the ass aren't breaking any rules while doing so.

Anti-socialists don't really get how socialism works, big surprise

Nobody really knows how socialism works because it doesn't

Read Bookchin

Typical ameritrash reaction

...

Why do Capitalcucks praise Pinochet when he ruined his country's economy, committed human rights violations, and overthrew one of the most successful and peaceful Socialists in human history?

Because fascism is the reaction of capitalism in crisis and being a nazi edgelord is in fashion.

>you can tell the future by the past

This is the ultimate pseud position

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

>Can only argue with memes
Prime time retardation

>argues by calling people pseuds and retarded
Why do lefties switch to ad hominem so quickly?

go back there

go back there

Because people like you don't actually intend to argue anything and belong on your containment board

I argued that socialism doesn't work and got called a pseud and retarded and I'm the one that doesn't intend to have a conversation? I'm not even /pol/ ffs

>your containment board
but it is you that belongs on >>>/leftypol/
/pol/ was never a containment board

>seems like one big astonishing straw-man fallacy to me

considering that you read a novel written by a woman – what did you expect, presicely, in the first place?

play bioshock instead its better than atalas shrugged
>go back to v
>done

I'm halfway through don't think I can finish it, the fountainhead is one of my favorite books though and superior to this

Don't read it as a defense of capitalism or a rebuttal to socialism. It doesn't really work on those fronts.

Instead, read it as a satire of people who veil their self-interest by pretending that it's in line with the greater good. The "equalization of opportunity act" isn't about equality at all — it's about certain people getting what they think ought to be theirs. Same with the failed motor factory. The powerless group together and claim power, leaving disasters in their wake.

The virtuous are powerful, but acknowledge their power and that their actions are selfish (albeit in an odd sense of the word). Those with the potential for virtue are at their best when they act in accordance with their longings. The villains are all duplicitous or stupid, and fall in with altruism for those reasons.

In Rand's view, the honest thing to do is be up-front about your selfishness, and honesty is paramount. It's almost Kantian, really (although in interviews she claimed to hate Kant). Those who are honest are morally pure, those who are deceitful or stupid are morally tainted. That's all there is, and the book shows that relatively well.

delet this

>this asshurt socialist in this thread
Why are you surprised nobody takes your murderous ideology seriously? Just drink bleach and stop shitting up the planet.

>I mean why does socialism necessarily bring corruption?
Well that depends. Does she define socialism to be collective ownership of the means of production or state ownership? If its the former, then I don't know how. If it's the latter, then its pretty obvious: governments are typically run by corrupt politicians

WAT where WAT? hush ya bun

>the fact that you expected something of that novel

You might as well stop. Past the 300 page mark, it get boring as fuck and never goes anywhere or does anything. Meeting Galt is anti climatic as fuck and the speech is only interesting if you picture Rand talking to people that current culture would consider 'SJW'.
The Fountainhead is better in every way.

>what is Tito's Yugoslavia

Can't its too late, its there now, you'll have to live with the fact/opinion a bunch of pixels and algorithms is better than your beloved book

Imagine when you get paid, you are so impotent to manage your own finances that you just give all your money to someone else and tell them to pay your bills for you, and to give back whatever is the difference. Do you think at no point in this "transaction" the 3rd party won't have the inclination to take any more from you than is necessary, considering your obliged ignorance to the actual figures involved? I mean, this is what is going to happen when you leave the government in charge of spending your money "appropriately". The entire idea of a responsible social government is predicated on an infallibility of man (and man's sense of virtue, the orientation of which is already conflicted today) when he assumes a position of power (don't socialists hate power structures?) when in practice the actual opposite is the effect: he risks becoming less ethical as he is more prone to (and, no less, ever wider-reaching) corruptability. We should be eliminating offices and government powers so that nebulous, opaque agencies maintain far less potential to interfere nefariously with the prerogative and exercise of social, free markets.

So untrue. NZ is socialist.

I agree that Astonishingly Shrugged shows how people lie about their intentions and use altruism to get what they want by claiming it's for the greater good. My point is that the villains' perspective is completely ridiculous and no socialist actually thinks like that. Rand takes the looters philosophy to the extreme which of course could never work and no one would want (straw-man, reductio ad absurdum) . Then on the other hand, the good guys are extremely talented genuineness and can do no wrong.

I didn't mean for this to become a socialism thread but fuck it. Socialism is about economy of scale, If everyone pays toward the same goal then the price per person goes down. If everyone has to pay their own way it is inefficient and will have no direction. Moochers and corruption are removed by democracy and freedom of speech. Compare NASA, a government sponsored agency responsible for the greatest achievement in human history, with SpaceX a scam to make stupid people buy e-cars.

Also
>don't socialists hate power structures?
where did you hear this?

Yeah luxembourg is a socialist hellhole. Nothing gets done here.

>Yugoslavia
>not horrifically corrupt

Koji kurac
Jesi li pušio travu ujutro?
Or are you just a foreigner who pretends to know what he's talking about.

No we aren't you utter spastic, everyone's constantly going on about how free our market it is, without capital gains tax etc.

no guys but like come on our ideology which is based on theft and oppression wasn't what those dictators did power to the workers amright comrades :DD

This book seemed to me just a 1000 page rant by ayn rand, the characters are one dimensional, the reason behind their actions are as unrealistic as possible, the dialogue is way too long, the book could easily be cut in half.
Ayn wrote herself in dagny and you can feel the bitterness she harbors toward people who disagree with her everywhere.

Oh, I completely agree that anyone using the book as a """refutation""" of socialism is pants-on-head retarded. My point is that it's not a totally dysfunctional work of art. Rand and Randians just don't understand what's good about her work.

The whole Objectivist actually has all kinds of baked-in arguments for socialism, if you also bring in some basic outside premises.
>Objectivists believe that they should enter voluntary contracts which fall in with their rational self-interest.
>Amortized risk is in one's rational self-interest.
>Socialism (of the non-state-controlled variety) is a voluntary contract which amortizes risk.
>Therefore Objectivists should be Socialists.
If we rope in the Social Contract, we can even advocate for state-sponsored socialism, since the Social Contract establishes that the presence of government is, in some sense, "agreed to" by the citizen.

Objectivism itself is apolitical. Rand just slapped her politics on top of it and nobody bothered to return to her framework to show how it might shake out with alternative premises.

Digressions about politics aside, Shrugged is a fine book. It features some compelling characters, occasional bursts of tight prose, and some fantastic insights about false altruism. It just doesn't work as a pro-capitalist argument, which is all anybody ever talks about it as. If we decouple our interpretation from Rand's politics, we see that there's plenty of coherent richness in her novel.

>tl;dr — Atlas Shrugged is not an argument.

people who disagree with her everywhere in those pages*

I do agree that Objectivism is more applicable and makes more sense when you remove politics and focus simply on its arguments regarding individualism.

And how exactly is participating in a socialist group inherently for the objectivist's self-interest?
If he is pursuing large profits, self-recognition and success, it most likely isn't to his benefit to join a collective or a commune.
However I don't see why anarcho-communists groups couldn't exist in a libertarian/anarcho-capitalist society as long as they were founded by workers and not taken from their owner, and are completely voluntary and don't interfere with other individuals' rights and liberties. If these are a bunch of people wishing to direct their organisation in a different why, who cares.

>"I argued that socialism"
>"argued"
>a few shitposts and meme pngs
you truely r retarted

are you talking about those pushover strawmen who literally can't stop crying and perish as soon as all the heroic capitalists escape to neverland?

Objectivist don't argue that making a lot of money is the goal.

I said "if"

>present opinion
>responded to by getting called names and butthurt about memes and banter
>call out hypocrisy
>'wow ur retarded'
kys my man, hope this meme doesn't trigger you too hard

Large profits aren't in one's rational self-interest.
>Law of diminishing returns — each additional dollar earned has less utility than the preceding dollar. Eventually, the effort one exerts to increase one's earnings is worth more than the increase in earnings, so you're making a bad economic decision.
>High-profile, large-scale wealth attracts gold diggers and outright thieves, reducing one's ability to trust others and engage in honest, meaningful relationships. These are things money can't buy, and they're among the most important of a person's needs.
>Without a group of some kind to support oneself in case of bankruptcy or other disaster, one assumes undue risk in the case that the business venture fails. Support networks are, when you look at the odds, better for everyone involved. Giving up absurd/excess wealth for this kind of security is a bargain. Or do you think insurance is a scam too?

It all comes down to fulfilling one's needs and reducing risks. It's nice to fantasize about being a tycoon, but the odds that you'll actually be one are so astronomically small that it's safer to bet on being an average Joe. And average Joes benefit from these organizational structures. That's what "amortized risk" means — over many lifetimes, you'll come out ahead, and the odds say that in any given lifetime, you ought to come out ahead. It's foolish to plan on being an outlier.